babyBlogED

I am Ed. I am now a father to a little baby boy-Wyatt Reed Lydic. The whole notion of being responsible for another person's life is somewhat overwhelming to me. This blog has chronicled my life into fatherhood and will continue to chronicle it throughout this new chapter of my life.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Hello there! You probably thought I forgot about you all, huh?! Well, I didn't and needless to say I have a ton to catch you up on. The last time I posted I left while Carly was in the middle of child labor. Obviously, she's not still in labor and Little Baby Wyatt is a real live person gracing this planet now. As a matter of fact, Wyatt turned a whole four months old last week! (yep, its been that quick already)

You will notice I have presented the labor process and Wyatt's first five days of life in a timeline fashion followed by highlights of the last four months.

LABOR:
The whole labor process was, well lets just say, it didn't go entirely as I had envisioned it would. I expected some screaming and agony from Carly lasting about an hour followed by an angel's chorus raining down upon Carly and I as the doctor would hand me a golden pair of scissors from which my now suddenly Atlas-like physique would sever Little Baby Wyatt's final connection from being a fetus to becoming a real live baby boy thereby officially welcoming Wyatt onto this earth.

Yep, so that didn't exactly happen-not even close. The angel's chorus was replaced by the sound of clamps, scalpels, and muffled doctor's voices, my figure remained skinny-assed, and I wasn't allowed to cut the umbilical cord.

Due to forces beyond our control, the plans we had made leading up to Wyatt's birth had to be almost completely disregarded. After some bit of physical and mental struggle (with the brunt of the physical struggle coming from Carly) it became increasingly obvious the best and safest way for Wyatt to be born was via a cesarean birth.

BIRTH:
With the hope of having a natural birth having completely disintegrated we were now being prepared for a c-section. The NICU was alerted and readied in case anything took a turn for the worse. Carly's bed was wheeled down the hall and into an operating room. In the meantime I was given an outfit resembling a beekeeper's attire to put on before I was able to follow Carly. When I get into the room I saw about eight other people dressed like I am surrounding Carly. I was given a chair to sit in that was placed right by Carly's head. Across Carly's chest was a big blue curtain that I was told I wasn't allowed to look over or past. I looked at Carly and could tell that, although maybe a little bit nervous, she was doing great. I was fairly freaked out. I could see the tops of the heads of a handful of doctors who are saying words like "clamps," "spreaders," "scalpel," etc.. Carly's upper torso was getting yanked and pulled on causing the parts of her that I can see, her shoulders and head, to be moving around quite a bit. After a few moments we heard our doctor mumble, "stop biting me!" Apparently Wyatt was none too pleased about getting removed from his nice, comfy home.

Then I heard it: I heard the baby scream! What a crazy, amazing, surreal feeling that is. I can't imagine anything in life will ever be able to mimic the feelings that I felt rush through my body when I first heard Little Baby Wyatt vocalize his announcement to the world that he indeed was gracing it with his presence. Thirty-three hours after stepping foot into the hospital we were finally rewarded with the gift of our son. Upon Wyatt's broadcast to everyone a woman quickly showed him to us and then whisked him away to a station where she cleaned him up and ran some tests.

For those who are wondering, the statistics behind Wyatt's birth are as follows:
Date: April 17th, 2013
Time: 3:10 am
Weight: 7lbs, 13oz.
Length: 21"

IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH:
After about twenty minutes Carly was wheeled into an observation room where a couple of nurses ran some tests on her and to where we were able to officially meet Wyatt for the first time. It was in this room that we had our first truly personal and tender moments with our newborn son. I doubt I'll ever forget how it felt to hold him for the first time and the feeling I had as I looked at my wife and now the mother of my child.

DAY 1:
We were pretty exhausted from the previous three days' events. Carly was sore and a little groggy but doing great. We had a bunch of visitors but didn't allow anyone to see him until about noon, nine hours after birth, so that we could relax and enjoy him ourselves for a little bit. Carly's grandma and grandpa both visited and both cried out of happiness of their newly bestowed title of "great-grandparents." One "highlight" of the day was that I got pooped on-Wyatt unloaded merconium, that thick tar-like poop, four times all over me. To make it even worse, he did this while there were visitors in the room.

Carly and Wyatt were learning how to breast feed with mixed results-Wyatt wasn't taking the latch as well as one might hope. As a result, the nurses brought a nipple shield to help assist in the process. After some trial and error this worked fairly well (there were the good easy feedings and then there were the feedings that were a little bit more of a struggle). The night was fairly uneventful as all three of us were able to get a really good night's sleep.

DAY 2:
I was getting my pictures from everyone for my project, The World At One Time: Day One (I still have them and I've tried captioning them the best I could. I'm still working on the best way to post them all). Overall, day 2 was a great day as we seemed to have the hang of everything. A friend of mine came over and brought some celebratory cigars. We went to the dock and I was able to kind of just decompress a little. When I got back, however (and still feeling a bit loopy from smoking the cigar), the seemingly mythological and dreaded "SECOND NIGHT" happened. We thought we were prepared, we thought we would be able to handle any situation-we thought this "SECOND NIGHT" thing that we were warned about only happened to crappy parents. After about 12 hours of nonstop fussing and freaking out from Wyatt beginning at about 8 pm and not ceasing until around 8 am the following morning, we were proven either to be crappy parents ourselves or that this was something that happens to pretty much everyone.

(For those of you who don't know, everyone-from hospital staff to family members-warns newbie parents of the "second night." Apparently this is something that happens to just about everyone. The night of the baby's birth the baby sleeps really well as the birthing process for him is extremely exhausting. The second night, however, the baby is really confused as being born has caused him to enter a universe that is completely different from what he has come accustomed to over the course of his nine or so months inside mom's womb. As a result, a lot of babies tend to act like a-holes the night of his second day here on earth.)

One thing that completely caught me off guard from Carly was that she was already talking about having another child. Its been said that men wouldn't be able to bare the pain of childbirth. I'm still not entirely sure if my gender could go through the pains of childbirth however, I do know that if any of us had to ever go through the kind of pain and stress that my wife went through there is no way any guy ever would be willing to go through it again, much less discuss it just two days after the fact.

DAY 3:
Exhausted from no sleep, everything we thought we believed in with handling Wyatt was destroyed. With that self-doubt diving deep under my skin I was thinking in my head, "how the hell are we going to be able to handle this?"

Although I ended up chewing on this qualm all day, a very exciting thing did happen on the third day of Wyatt's life: WE GOT TO GO HOME-our five day stay in the hospital was finally over and we could have Wyatt all to ourselves...Hold on a second, we don't get to take that hand dandy little red nurse pager home with us? We don't get to have someone on call at all times? Uh oh, shit is about to GET REAL NOW!!! Loading up the baby and putting him into the car and bringing him into our home for the first time was fairly nerve racking. Its at this point that my insecurities of whether or not I could do this, do this "dad" thing, kind of struck me. We were now the ones, Carly and I, who were going to be solely responsible for this person's existence; his well-being or lack thereof was now officially up to us.

Once I was done hyperventilating over these notions we were able to get Little Baby Wyatt home safe and sound. That night, quite opposite of the previous night, actually went pretty well. I really didn't sleep as the anxiety from the previous night's events were still fresh in my memory. However, with that aside, Wyatt slept great and let mommy and daddy sleep about six straight hours with only needing a feeding about halfway through.

DAY 4:
Our first day without the hospital's assistance went pretty freaking good all things considered. Baby, like I mentioned, slept great. The whole day he was pretty cooperative. It was my niece's second birthday and thus their parents had a birthday party for her. We were a little hesitant to go and bring the baby but I'm glad we did-it gave everyone who hadn't seen Wyatt yet the chance to see him without having to bombard our apartment. Little Baby Wyatt slept through most of the time we were there but seemed really fussy for some time after we got home. After a little bit of struggling he slept pretty good through the night.

DAY 5:
Wyatt fed really great. This was the first full day that Wyatt didn't fight Carly while trying to eat. We went to Carly's grandparents' house out in Northeast-about a fifteen minute drive. Wyatt was definitely a rock star-albeit a sleeping rock star. Everyone wanted to hold him and watch him and they in particular wanted to see his eyes. However, the entire three hours we were there he was sound asleep. Between the drive to Northeast that day and my brother's house in Lake City (about a 25 minute drive) one thing we learned early on about Wyatt is that a good car ride will definitely put him to sleep.

SINCE THEN:
I could bore you with all of the details of every single day since Wyatt was born (he's now 130 days old) but I won't. However, there have been some highlights I feel that are worth noting.

About two weeks after Wyatt was born I was holding him in my hands and was having one of those cliche moments where I was thinking I had the cutest most adorable son ever. However, the next thought that crossed my mind was that "I bet even Adolf Hitler had people in his early life that thought he was cute and adorable too." This thought kind of dampened my mood. Since that moment anytime Wyatt starts acting like a pain in the ass I call him by his alter-ego nickname: Adolf. (By the way: Carly isn't a real big fan of the nickname; she prefers to call him a "dalek" after some sort of evildoers in a show she watches, "Dr. Who"-its some sort of nerdy thing of hers that flies over my head).

One disappointing thing I found about having an infant is that they seem to survive mostly on robotic-like instincts, especially in the first few weeks. For example, if you pet a cat she will purr giving you some indication that she's content and that you've done right by her. With a newborn there isn't that instant gratification at all; when you do something that you think should elicit a positive response there's just a blank stare and barely anything else. Around the age of four weeks Wyatt began to have social smiles and began to really give us responses that broke the purely instinctual type reactions we had seen up to that point.

Just a few weeks ago we took a road trip to Philadelphia to see some family. In the trip Wyatt went to his first baseball game (Phillies/Giants in Philadelphia), his second baseball game (Pirates/Cardinals in Pittsburgh), dipped his tootsies into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in Ocean City New Jersey (he hated that), and saw the Liberty Bell, among other adventures. Some of the cuter pictures of him from the trip can be found down below.

Well that's it, that's pretty much what its been like to raise a child in the first four months for us. In about a week we plan on introducing Wyatt to real food for the first time; we plan on it being pureed sweet potatoes. This should be fun...

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

This post is completely devoted to PICTURES! I have posted what I feel is some of the best pictures captured over the course of our nine month adventure into Carly and I becoming parents to Wyatt Reed Lydic and the first week of his life.

Wyatt was born on April 17th at 3:10 am. He weighed seven pounds, thirteen ounces and measured twenty one inches long.

In the coming days I will be writing a new post devoted to updating you all on the specific events of labor, the birth of Wyatt, and the immediate days following his birth. For now I just wanted to share some of the single moments of beauty that come with a baby, in particular my baby, being born.

Please note that this NOT the photo gathering project that some of you participated in-I will be getting that in order and ready to share with everyone shortly.

Our very first glimpse at Little Baby Wyatt. Taken 10/5/12

A 3D look at Wyatt. He is about the size of a raspberry.

The now somewhat infamous view of Wyatt. Taken 12/21/12.

Carly trying to decide whatcrib mattress pads to buy.Taken 11/28/12.

A "baby bump" picture.4 months pregnant.Taken 11/22/12.

Another baby bump picture.5 months pregnant.Taken 12/21/12.

The "non-stress test."Possibly the most stressfull part of being pregnant. Taken 2/22/13.

Carly all cocky and smug. Little does sheknow that Little Baby Wyatt was goingto take 33 more hours to show his face.Taken 4/15/13 at 6:07 pm.

The bed in which Carly would soon feelsome the worst pain in her life.Taken 4/15/13 at 6:03 pm.

The very first picture taken of Wyatt.He is literally just minutes old.You can see the nurse holdingthe ink pad for his footprints.Taken on 4/17/13 at 3:16 am(he was officially born at 3:10).

Wyatt is just 20 minutes old. You can still see hisblue little feet. Taken on 4/17/13 at 3:30 am.

Baby and mama catching up onsome much needed rest just hoursafter delivery.Taken on 4/17/13 at 10:33 am.

Baby and mama introducingthemselves to each other.Wyatt is just 3 hours, 34 minutes old.Taken 4/17/13 at 6:44 am.

Snug as a bug. Here is has beenalive for 5 hours and 2 minutes.Taken 4/17/13 at 8:12 am.

Wyatt sleeping (again!).Taken 4/17/13 at 6:32 pm

Daddy and Wyatt. Wyatt is startingto age. Here he is and entire 3 1/2 days old.Taken 4/20/13 at 12:09 pm.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

So, we have now been sitting here for 24 full hours in the hospital anxiously waiting for Little Baby Wyatt's entrance into this world. As Carly, myself, and the rest of the world (relatively speaking) wait for his arrival I'm going to recap what has happened in the past few months since I last updated this blog...

First, can you believe its been a little over eight months since I got the call from Carly that nearly put me on the floor while I was stocking cartons of milk? The mere thought of becoming a father in the next few hours, quite honestly, has me freaking out a bit.

On a bit of a lighter note, here's something kind of odd that I wanted to share with you:

A couple of months ago Carly thought it would be cool to find out what a computer program thinks our baby would look like. The picture above is its result. I think its kind of creepy and I'm not quite sure where it got the ginger looking hair from. It was just another one of those things that helped to amplify Carly's excitement so I guess in that regard it did its job-still creepy though.

One of the really great things Carly did for us in preparing for the baby was sign us up for a couple of baby classes held through the Women's Center of Erie. Initially I was not at all thrilled with having to take these classes; the classes met every Tuesday and Thursday in the month of March. However, my displeasure with the idea of these was quickly extinguished. I cannot tell you how freaking awesome these classes were. The women who taught the classes were absolutely wonderful and the material that was covered made myself and Carly feel mentally empowered. Thus we were able to feel more ready for childbirth and its consequences than we were previously had (although I did, regretfully, have to miss watching a handful of Penguins hockey games to attend these classes-the things a dad does for his child that isn't even born yet!!!). Honestly, if anyone knows they are having a baby or plans on having a baby and lives in the Erie area I highly recommend you to take these classes-they are that good!

Believe it or not, I too have been doing things to prepare for Little Baby Wyatt to come (I mean, other than writing this blog of course). One thing I got into my head was to build some wooden blocks that were meant to resemble the toy letter cubes that children learn their alphabet with. Carly was my inspiration for this-she was painting some the letters of Wyatt's name to hang on the wall of his nursery. When I saw them I thought letters on wooden blocks might be pretty cool too (actually, I just wanted to "one up" her, haha). Although I had never even thought about doing any woodworking projects I dove into this one head on. I took a 4'x8' sheet of plywood and then cut them, glued them, hinged them, stained them, painted them, and polyurethaned them into the final forms. At the end you will find the pictures showing what the end result of this project was along with the letters that Carly painted as well (that were quite cool in their own right).

(I know it might be a little narcissistic for me to gloat about it with the pictures and all but this is my blog and you have to see my awesomeness!, haha)

Another thing I did was cook and freeze a bunch of food. Over the past two weeks I have prepared 2 full pans of lasagna (25 servings), 60 chicken nuggets, 53 meatballs, 3 tubs of goulash, 24 breakfast burritos, and 30 stuffed shells. I figured once we got the baby home we weren't going to be having the energy to be doing too much cooking of dinners (I haven't been down that road yet but I can imagine a screaming infant and baby's poopy diapers everywhere kind of dampens the mood to cook).

One of the crazier undertakings we took pre-baby was to move. We found a far better apartment and a place that seems to be far more baby friendly and decided to pack up and go. We did this an entire two weeks before Wyatt was due to grace us with his presence. Although we didn't move far (only about three or four miles away from the old place) you can imagine how big of a pain in the ass an 8 1/2 month pregnant Carly was to me and everyone that helped move-haha. Kidding...Sort of.

One of the, if not the best, preparation tools we have been able to utilize is the folks who are largely reading this blog right now-you, our friends and family. I know I've said this before and maybe I'm starting to overdo it a bit but I really want to thank everyone and anyone that has taken the time to help us in our endeavor into parenthood. (A special shout out to Greg from the corporate office of the company I work for as him and his wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Kayden on February 8th. I have had the great pleasure of being able to share baby stories with him for the past number of months).

It is very likely that Wyatt will show his face very soon so I better get going (don't want to miss "cutting the cord" on the account of "could you just hold on?-I'm trying to update my blog?!"). Anyways, here is a picture of a happy joyous Carly just getting into her gown from yesterday (believe me, that happy joyous Carly is far removed right now).

As always, I wish you all pleasant reading and hope you join me for my next post-the post that will NOT be about impending parenthood but rather current parenthood.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

2012 sure was a crazy year, wasn't it? The past year saw, among other things, guys swimming really fast in the Summer Olympics (Phelps and Lochte), a South Korean guy (Psy) that became a cult icon for singing something that included an entire four English words, and someone (Felix Baumgartner) actually jumping out of a helium balloon 128,100 feet above earth and then living to tell the story. Oh, and one last item of note that happened in 2012 is the fact that I impregnated a woman thus forcing the coming year, 2013, to become the year that I become a father (and the woman who I impregnated, also my wife, to become a mother).

Its been almost a full two months since I last posted an update on this blog and, needless to say, there are a few things I think you may find interesting.

First, I want to show you a picture. This picture is a 3-D sonogram picture from December 21st. If you notice, Little Baby Wyatt, an entire negative 112 days old, is demonstrating a hand gesture seemingly with the intent of communicating something to the effect of "leave me alone." I want it be known that the very day he is born he is soooo grounded; he needs to know "flicking off" mommy and daddy will NOT be tolerated.

Stop Looking And Prodding At Me!

In addition to having the sonogram done that day there was the typical pre-natal check up and talk to the doctor. It was during our discussion with the doctor, Dr. Warner, that I got some really "disturbing" news. Dr. Warner informed us that Carly, although currently in great physical shape needed to exercise more. The reason for this, she explained, is that exercising would help in lowering her blood pressure and working her muscles would make for an easier birth. Her suggestion was to do some walking and the easiest way to do the walking, she posed, was to park far from store fronts of the places that we shopped. As she said this I mentally agonized with the fact that this meant no more of the awesomely fantastic "Expectant Mother Parking" that I had become accustomed to utilizing (despite Carly's embarrassment). Below you will see where we used to be able to park and where we are now forced to park at Wegman's. This is a travesty that cannot be oversold.

This is where we used to park

This is where we have to park now at Wegman's (that's our red vehicle on the right)

On a bit more of a serious note we learned about a month ago that Carly has gestational diabetes. When I first found this out I was kind of freaked out a bit. I was thinking something to the effect of "first she has high blood pressure, now diabetes-there is no way this is going to be a 'smooth' pregnancy." However, once Carly and I ascertained a bit of information we learned that this isn't an "end of the world" type problem. Carly now has to take her blood sugar four times per day and monitor the meals she eats. In a weird way, this may actually be a good thing. We had gotten into some really bad dietary habits from eating out a lot to snacking on sugary foods throughout the day. The gestational diabetes has forced Carly (and to a large extent myself) to consciously examine the foods she is consuming and thus make better decisions.

There are a few more items I would like to quickly update you on:

Carly, to my surprise, has yet to really seem to act "hormonal" yet. I have been hearing for the past five months about how big of a "B" Carly will become with the pregnancy. To this point it really hasn't happened yet. (Although a couple of weeks ago while grocery shopping she threw a fit over something really stupid and threw out all of the coupons.)

Despite a couple of risk factors Carly has developed, the high blood pressure and gestational diabetes, the baby is doing perfectly fine so far. Every test has come back exactly as good as we could hope. In the last round of tests Wyatt's size showed a result of being in the 40 percentile meaning that at this stage in his development Wyatt is larger than 39 percent of his peers and smaller than 60 percent of them-basically ideal.

Carly keeps wanting to "spoon" when we wake up and for me to hold her tummy. Holy hell, I really hate laying in bed. The next few months better move quickly because I don't know how much I can take of this "let's just lay in bed for a while" thing.

I received three of the "so you're going to be a dad" type books for Christmas. Although I am extremely grateful for them I just need to get something off of my chest that they all discuss-"male sympathy pregnancy." I'm sorry, I just can't buy the whole male sympathy pregnancy thing. To this point I just see men who supposedly "experience pregnancy symptoms" as guys who are just jealous of the attention their partner is receiving and thus (even subconsciously) want to feel what she is feeling. As soon as my breasts start feeling tender or I have menstrual cramps I will gladly retract this statement.

In addition to being pregnant, Carly is really starting to look pregnant now too. Below you will see a couple of shots of Carly's "baby bump."

December 21: 23 weeks, 5 days along

Thanksgiving Day, November 22: 19 weeks, 4 days along

Something that I have found interesting with pregnancy is the way nature kind of gives a parent-to-be a time period to get ready for the new addition. A byproduct of the nine months given to a human offspring to be ready for its life is the fact that the nine months also gives its parents time to get ready for the arrival. The past few months have been full of us collecting diapers, outfits, and preparing a nursery for Little Baby Wyatt. In addition we have been able to (probably more me than Carly) try to mentally prepare for the responsibility of being parents. As I sit here right now we already have about forty outfits, eight packages of diapers, and four boxes of wipes. In addition, we will be having a diaper party and baby shower in the next couple of months. I cannot thank nature enough for this little buffer zone to parenthood.

That is just about I have for all of you for now. Just as an FYI Carly has a sleep apnea test this Thursday night (basically she snores a lot and they are trying to find out if its a symptom of her high blood pressure) and then she has a pre-natal test on Friday. Oh, and for those of you following my baby thought splurges on Twitter (@babyBlogED), I got a new smartphone so I'll be splurging a lot more! Yay!

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I continue to wish you all pleasant reading and, in spirit of the new year, I hope you all have a great 2013,

Saturday, November 10, 2012

"Our freakin child is a boy!!! We are going to be having a little baby Wyatt!" Those were just about the exact thoughts that traced through my head at about 12:30 yesterday afternoon upon the sonogram doctor circling around a certain piece of anatomy only found in boys (although I "played it cool" trying to act as indifferent to the news as I could-I didn't want it to seem as though I would have been too terribly upset had we found out we were having a girl).

With that awesome fantastic news out of the way, here's how the past few weeks have gone...

Carly is still doing well. She still really isn't doing the "showing" thing yet. One issue that has caused some concern is the fact that she has had pretty high blood pressure through the length of the pregnancy so far. At the beginning this really wasn't a big deal but as she progresses further the more of an issue it can become apparently. To this point the doctors have put her on some blood pressure medication to hopefully help get it under control.

The baby, however, is doing really well. All of the tests so far have come out perfect to this point. It was actually kind of neat yesterday as the baby seemed to be waving when we got the sonogram done. He (I can say "he" now instead of "it"-pretty cool, haha) had his thumb folded and was flapping the four fingers on his right hand as the doctor was trying to measure his limbs. Quite honestly, he was kind of being a pain in the butt (can I say that about my unborn child?) as he kept moving around in the opposite direction of where the doctor was needing him to be so that she could perform her tests.

As I sit right here we have about 156 days to go until Carly is full term and little baby Wyatt Lydic is due to grace us with his presence. According to just about everyone I talk to, especially current fathers, I'm told I should start talking to our baby. I'm going to be honest, the whole idea of this doesn't exactly thrill me. I know, I know-its supposed to be this cute thing that you do to bond with your child and that doing so will help the baby know my voice when he is born. Realizing and understanding this concept still doesn't allow me to set aside the "holy crap I feel really weird talking to my wife's stomach" feeling that I inevitably have.

Knowing that I will be a father in a few months still has me freaked out a bit. One thing that I have been doing to process the concept of being a father is studying my relationship with our cats. Yep, I said it, I'm studying my relationship with our cats. There are times where the stupid cats really piss me off. Take Boomer (our pure black cat) for instance; he will wake us up in the wee hours of the morning to feed him by crunching around on some newspapers. Right at that morning hour and for a few hours thereafter all I can think about is slugging him. However, I know (and he probably knows) by the end of the day he'll be curled up purring on my lap while I watch Jeopardy. I'm guessing to a MUCH larger extent being a parent is kind of the same thing: kids do stuff to piss you off, you get over it (or forgive them for it), and then eventually play Jeopardy together later.

There's something else a lot more serious that is really starting to make me extremely nervous about becoming a father as well. Very honestly, as we get further along in this process I've been starting to develop this fear of the emotional interpersonal connectivity that seems to be inherent with becoming and then being a parent. (For those of you who don't know me all that well, I tend to mentally analyze things quite meticulously). It seems as though we, as humans, will do nothing in our lives that will have more impact on another human being or on this world than bear a child/children. I was doing some thinking and realized that from the day that little baby Wyatt is born I will have some sort of responsibility to him for the rest of my life. Every single action, every single breath I take the rest of my life will have some sort of impact on Wyatt's life. In addition, there forever will be an emotional attachment of some sort from me to him (and his mom, Carly) and vice versa. Right now, the idea of this responsibility, a responsibility that I haven't even come close to ever having to this point in my life, has me freaked out a bit.

Finally, from information gathered from other parents, I know one definite thing that I get to look forward to from having a baby boy: getting peed on! Every parent that has ever had a son has been telling me that boys will pee all over his parents. They all tell me that there's something that when the air hits a little boy's pee pee shooter urine for quite the shower. (you caught the play on words there, right?).

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I continue to wish you all pleasant reading,

---Ed

As a side note, you will see a tab at the top of this page entitled "The World At One Time: Day One." I hope you all take a look at it and tell me what you think. I really hope anyone and everyone is able to participate in it. I also sent emails to a few companies yesterday (including Instagram and Shutterfly) requesting their help in this project. There are even more companies and people that I am going to try to reach to hopefully maximize the potential of this idea. THANK YOU!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Hello again. It has now been twenty-nine days since I last posted about our upcoming baby. Since then Carly and I have been on vacation-likely our last vacation ever without the burden excitement of being parents. Also, yesterday we had our first sonogram and thus were able to see our baby for the first time ever.

To begin with, let's discuss the sonogram. As I mentioned, Carly and I were able to see our little baby for the first time yesterday. What an experience that was. First of all, to this point in the pregnancy I've been able to kind of compartmentalize the idea of becoming a father a little by thinking of the baby as a walnut/Lima bean/kumquat/whatever-odd-food-item-you-can-think-of rather than a real person. However, yesterday confirmed that, yes indeed, there is a real person with a real beating heart living and growing inside of my wife's tummy and that the implications of that fact are going to be far greater than a walnut or a kumquat would be (it seems like every morning Carly is informing me that our baby is the size of a different food item).

I'm not quite sure I'll ever forget the day yesterday. Carly and I both went into work and then met at our apartment to go to the appointment. I was fairly nervous for it while Carly, as she seems to always be with anything to do with the baby, was really excited. After sitting in the waiting room for a few minutes we were called back into the sonogram room. Everyone had told me that, being so relatively early in the pregnancy, we wouldn't really be able to see anything more than a blob. This expectation couldn't have been farther from the truth.

I was amazed with how well defined the baby's features were and how much the baby looked like a real person. We were able to clearly see things like the baby's tiny little rapidly beating heart, its head (with a tiny little brain inside), its tiny little arms, its tiny little legs (which were crossed), and a tiny little nose with tiny little ears, among other features.The doctor told us the baby's CRL (as we learned in a previous post, the "crown rump length") was a total of five centimeters-less than two inches!!! Seeing all those "tiny little" features and having them all add up to just five centimeters was and still is just incredible to me.

Another thing that I found amazing was that the baby was sleeping the whole time. Maybe this should be embarrassing for me to admit but I had no idea that babies actually sleep in the womb. The doctor said she was nudging the baby to try to wake him/her up-I thought she was just cracking a not-so-amusing joke. Carly explained to me afterwards that this wasn't an odd joke but rather a factual thing that was going on. It also should be noted that the baby, despite the doctor's apparent best efforts, refused to be awoken. Obviously this baby has Carly's deep sleep habits.

(If you scroll down to the bottom of this post you will see three pictures from the sonogram. We still don't know the sex of the baby and won't know for about another six to ten weeks.)

After the sonogram part was done we were escorted into another room where another doctor came in to discuss the actual medical results that were accomplished during the sonogram. The woman explained to us that they measured the back of the neck and the nasal passage along with a few other things to help determine certain risk factors and so far everything has come back good for us and the baby. At one point the woman said to me "congratulations, dad" as she left the room. It kind of struck me when she said that; she was the first person other than Carly to refer to me as "dad." It was just another one of those "gulp" type moments for me.

One item that I thought was pretty funny about the various rooms that we were in was that there were smelling salts taped everywhere. The sonogram room had salts taped to the monitors and the other rooms had the salts taped to the paper towel dispenser. Just kind of an odd thing I thought.

In addition to the sonogram, there have been other noteworthy things that have happened in the past four-plus weeks since my last post. One such item was our vacation that we took to Nags Head, North Carolina last week (a town in an area known as The Outer Banks). There are a couple of reasons I'm going to discuss our vacation in the baby blog. The first reason is that it was, like earlier mentioned, likely myself and Carly's last vacation without being parents. Secondly, as I will further discuss, it gave me the opportunity to "study" a couple of other fathers-my brothers.

This may sound like something extremely unimportant in the grand scheme of things but during our vacation part of me was thinking about how this would be the last time I would be able to do these things without having to worry about a dirty diaper, or a car seat, or baby formula, etc.. I'll be honest, the selfish part of me was kind of bummed about this fact. However, there is another part of me that is kind of looking forward to having a tiny little person to share the various elements of the vacation with, especially as he or she gets older.

One of the more strange things for me that has come out of my impending fatherhood is how I look at my two brothers and almost study how they act as fathers themselves. For those of you who don't know, I have two younger brothers: Rick is two years younger than me and has a four year old daughter and Brian who is four years younger than me and has a one year old daughter. With me being the oldest, I have almost always experienced certain life's milestones before either of my brothers. For me looking for advice from my younger brothers, even if its not quite discernible to them that that's what I'm doing, is really really awkward for me. Sharing a house while on vacation with them gave me a little bit of a venue to where I could at least study their interactions and handling of certain situations so that, at the very least, I might know a little of what to expect in the future.

Other than for all that there really isn't much more else to discuss at this point. Our next appointment is in four weeks on November, 2. There won't be a sonogram done then, just a basic pre-natal check up that day from the way I understand it.

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I continue to wish you all pleasant reading,

Friday, September 7, 2012

So, its now been a couple of weeks since I updated the progress of the pregnancy and the lives that surround it. For those of you in a hurry, here's quick snapshot of the stuff that has gone on:

Carly isn't fat yet

Carly acts crazy a lot of times-some of it is normal, some of it I'm not sure about yet.

According to a site, the baby is 3/4" CRL and has developed all major organs, muscles, and nerves.

With that out of the way, here is the unabridged version of all the goings-on of the past two weeks...

We are now about two months into the pregnancy. Carly, at least to my untrained and usually unobservant eyes, doesn't seem to have put on any extra weight from the baby-no signs of "showing" yet. I'm not really sure when we should expect to see physical signs but I'm guessing it should be sometime soon.

Since first finding out we are having a baby Carly has been trying to get me to read books on the pregnancy. There's this book by Jenny McCarthy, Belly Laughs, that Carly is convinced I will "looooooove." I doubt this opinion of hers greatly and haven't taken this leap of faith for her yet. Although the book is only 165 pages, I'm hoping I can find the cliff notes version of it on Amazon or something.

Apparently, via information gathered from lilypie.com, the baby right now is about the size of a walnut. Its crown rump length, or CRL, is about three-quarters of an inch, and, like I mentioned in the outline above, has developed the basic elements of all major organs, muscles, and nerves. This fact is amazing to me and I really hadn't thought about it until about a week ago. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around all of the biological elements going inside my wife that will lead to another walking talking human being. When someone cuts their hand, for example, its relatively easy to see how some thread will lead to the closing and thus healing of the wound. However, looking at another human being and imagining that person creating another human being within their body is absolutely mind boggling to me, let alone the person doing the creating is my wife and is creating our future son or daughter. Wow.

One thing that is really driving me nuts during this pregnancy so far is I can't tell when Carly is acting legitimately crazy about stuff or if the craziness is the result of her being pregnant. If she is being legitimately crazy I want to be legitimately pissed off. However, I'm afraid her craziness is just the result of all the goofy stuff-you know, like the added hormones and chemical weirdness, all boiling up on her insides. If that's the case I don't want be some kind of a-hole and freak out on her over something I helped cause (wink).

The perfect example of this happened this past Wednesday night. We, as many nights the past few weeks, decided we weren't going to cook dinner. After much deliberation we decided to go to Wegman's for supper (their hot foods and salad bar is amazing). There have been numerous occasions where we have spent way too much money on dinner at Wegman's so this time we set a budget of about twenty dollars (which is feasible as long as you don't let all the bright lights and shiny colors impulse you into maxing out your credit card). All was fine and dandy-Carly had a container of turkey and stuffing and I had some manicottis and a couple of meatballs. If we walked straight to the checkout from there we would have been fine-well within budget. However, Carly asked if it was cool if she got some fruit salad and I obliged thinking "what's another couple of bucks?." Then she asked if we could get some macaroni and cheese, I said sure. It turns out Carly got over two pounds of fruit salad (at $7.99/lb it came to over eighteen dollars for some freakin cantaloupe and watermelon!!!) and the mac 'n cheese was one of those "club packs" (ten bucks). When the cashier rang us out our total dinner bill at a grocery store came to $48.56, just a shade over the twenty dollars we were trying to stay around.

Moral of the story? Every time Carly does something crazy like that I don't know if its the baby talking and thus her concept of all that is rational has completely disintegrated or if its something I should really be mad about and maybe politely verbalize to her. There's the stereotype out there that pregnant women act crazy and I'm hesitant to find out how much crazier Carly might get.

The last item of note is the fact that in a couple of weeks we head off on our annual trek to the Outer Banks, North Carolina. For Carly and I this likely will be our last vacation without being a full blown family with babies/kids and stuff. That's just another one of those things that kind of makes me grasp my breath a little when I think about it.

That's all I have for everyone right now. As Carly's pregnancy begins to progress further I anticipate having more frequent posts. I had a lot of people in the past two weeks request that I put up posts more often. And, although I am extremely humbled and grateful for all of the positive feedback from this blog that I am getting, I want to make sure that I don't "water it down" with posts just for the sake of cranking them out. Each time I write a new composition I want it to be fresh and, most of all, genuine. I feel as though if I keep this mentality throughout the lifespan of babyBlogED it could become something that hopefully you, the reader, will benefit and enjoy, I, the writer, will benefit and enjoy, and perhaps even something my future child will be able to one day benefit from and enjoy.

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I wish you all pleasant reading,